Cogliano v. Ferguson
| Decision Date | 13 September 1917 |
| Citation | 117 N.E. 45,228 Mass. 147 |
| Parties | COGLIANO v. FERGUSON. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Exceptions from Superior Court, Suffolk County; Frederic H. Chase, Judge.
Action by Patrick Cogliano against James H. Ferguson. There was a verdict for plaintiff, and defendant excepted. Exceptions overruled.
Reabody, Arnold, Batchelder & Luther, of Boston, for defendant.
This is an action of tort to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff while in the employ of the defendant by reason of the explosion of a charge of dynamite left unexploded from a prior blast. The accident occurred in Maine. Therefore the rights of the parties are to be settled according to the law of that state unaffected by part I of the Workmen's Compensation Act (St. 1911, c. 751). Such statutes of this commonwealth have no force outside our borders. Gould's Case, 215 Mass. 480, 102 N. E. 693, Ann. Cas. 1914D, 372. There was no dispute that the law of Maine puts the burden on the plaintiff to prove his own due care and to negative assumption of risk. Otherwise the case is to be governed by the principles of the common law, which are presumed to be the same in Maine as those prevailing in this commonwealth. Lemieux v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 219 Mass. 399, 106 N. E. 992.
There was evidence from which it could have been found that the defendant had taken a contract to do excavating for the Gardiner water district in Maine and was at the work in person from time to time, and that a large amount of blasting was required to be done in the execution of the contract; that the plaintiff was boss in general charge of the work, but that he had no special knowledge of blasting and did not know that it was a frequent occurrence for charges to fail to explode and that therefore careful inspection was necessary after the firing of each blast to see that every charge was exploded; and that the plaintiff, although the general boss, had nothing to do with blasting, which was in the charge of another employee of the defendant. The course of work at the time of the injury was to drill a series of holes in the rock, charge them with dynamite and explode them by a battery. The evidence tended to show that the charge in one hole failed to explode with the others and that it exploded later when the plaintiff was working near by.
However strange it may seem that a boss of such experience as the plaintiff described himself to be should be ignorant of these facts about modern methods of blasting by the use of dynamite, still the extent of his actual knowledge in this respect was a question of fact, and the case must be considered on the footing that the jury had a right to give credit to the testimony of the plaintiff and to reject other testimony and inferences in conflict therewith. This is not a case where the uncontroverted...
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...an express statement on the matter, it will be presumed to be without extra-territorial effect. Gould's case, 102 N.E. 45; Cogliano v. Ferguson (Mass.) 117 N.E. 45; Kennerstone v. Boat Co. (Conn.) L. R. A. 1916 Crane v. Leonard, et al. (Mich.) 183 N.W. 204; Roberts v. Glass Corp. (Mich.) 24......
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...a fellow servant, or that the plaintiff had assumed the risk of the injury. Cronan v. Armitage (Mass.) 190 N. E. 12. In Cogliano v. Ferguson, 228 Mass. 147, 117 N. E. 45, it was held that, if the plaintiff was ignorant of any danger arising from an unexploded charge of dynamite, he did not ......
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